Shared Genetic Architecture of Asthma and Allergic Diseases

A strong genetic relationship is present between asthma and allergic diseases. This paper in this issue identified specific loci that are shared between the diseases and provide treatment of the diseases.

Asthma is a chronic respiratory syndrome of the airways in the lungs. Asthma causes inflammation and narrowing inside the lung and restricting the air supply. Asthma is characterized by episodes of tightness in the chest, wheezing, breathlessness, and coughing. Allergic diseases are the conditions caused by hypersensitivity of the immune system. These diseases include hay fever, allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis (eczema). Asthma is a diverse disease that can be either allergic or non-allergic (Johansson et al, 2004). Allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis and eczema are response of exaggerated or inappropriate immune reaction and causes damage to the host. Allergic disease is mostly mediated by immunoglobulin E (IgE) (Lenz, H. J. 2007, Wallace et al, 2008). Furthermore, previous epigenetic study has reported methylation loci linked to asthma and allergy through the immunoglobulin E (IgE) pathway (Liang et al, 2015).

These conditions share a common genetic etiology, so they have similarities in symptoms. Approximately half of the loci in genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of a person immune related disease enhance the risk of at least two diseases. This indicates the sharing of genetic architecture of immune mediated inflammatory and autoimmune diseases (Cotsapas et al, 2011). In addition, grouping variants by the traits they influence should provide insight into the specific biological processes underlying co-morbidity and disease risk (Ober et al, 2011).

Epidemiological data have found that coexistence of asthma and allergy is frequent. They can occur either in the same individual or in closely related family members (Belsky et al, 2013). Collectively, these findings imply that the genetic contribution between the asthma and allergic diseases is significant and there is a major need for further genetic and environmental studies to find the relationship between asthma and allergic diseases (Ferreira et al,2017).

In this issue, a study conducted by Zhaozhong Zhu and colleagues identify the shared genetic architecture of asthma and allergic diseases. It is a large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) analysis based on these traits to explore the genetic correlations using data from UK Biobank (Zhu et al, 2018).

References

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